Brothers in Arms
by karrenia
Summary: Sometimes one's luck runs out, a look at each member of Billy the Kid's gang during the closing scenes of the second movie.
1. Default Chapter

"Brothers in Arms" by Karen 

Disclaimer: Young Guns II is the property of its respective producers and creators, and does not belong to me, and no money is made from this. The characters and events are used only for entertainment purposes. Written for Cosmorific in the 2005 New Years Resolution Project.

Chavez was up to his shins in the hard packed soil of the small fenced in stockade. He didn't mind because he was absorbed in his task, refurbishing and mending the leather harness and saddles of the former Regulators' mounts. His horse, a piebald cow pony grazed at the far end, would occasionally pick up its feet, amble over and nose his shoulder, forcing Chavez to gently encourage the horse to move away.

In the distance, he could see the rancher's main house. The wind shifted direction and was gusted directly into his face, ruffling his hair and the leather hides of his leggings. The oil can dropped to the ground, unnoticed as Josiah "Doc" Scurlock emerged from the interior of the house, and stood shilloueted half in and half out of the doorway. From the expression on his face, he had something on his mind, his dish water blond hair wet from a recent washing.

Chavez, stood up, shoved all his belongings and those of his companions into the saddlebags, and hurried over to join the other members of their band, in his rush to the front door; the wind continually whipped his long mane of black hair around his face. Doc looked up from contemplating the cracks in the wooden floorboards of the front stoop, and looked him in the eye. "Trouble in paradise, Chavez. We've been made. It seems that the authorities have found us and they're sending the new sheriff after us."

"I know we could not hide out forever." Chavez nodded, resigned to whatever eventuality that they found themselves in and to deal with it as it came. "What does Billy plan to do?" he asked.

"You know him as well as I do," Doc grinned, a narrowing of his lips, "It's all or nothing. Fight or flee, and for right now. We've agreed it's best to make a run for it." Doc added, reaching to his left and strapping the long-handled Colt flintlock rifle to its holding place in the leather case strapped to his back. "You got the gear ready?" he asked.

"Of course."

The heat of the day set in, and Chavez handed out clothes to his friends, to protect their mouths and noses from the sand and grit stirred up by the hot wind. For the first few hours they made good time, travelling at a rapid pace, but not one that would exhaust their horses. Billy picked a direction that would throw their pursuers off their trail. It would be obvious for them to head north, Dave kept insisting on heading for Silver Springs however Billy appeared unwilling to take the suggestion, having another destination in mind.

They stopped for a brief rest in dried up arroyo where a river had flowed but not had carved out a serpentine crevice in the sand and stone. The trail underneath was criss crossed with the tracks of other travelers that had come this way before them. It proved to be a costly delay. The youngest member toppled from his saddle as a lead shot whizzed through air, and tore right into his side. Doc didn't want to leave the boy, on the off chance that he might still be alive, but the shooter did not give him the opportunity, setting off a volley of gunfire. The first shot seemed to have been a lucky one, for them, not his friends, because the others continued to miss and richoet off the ground and rock formations.

Chavez leapt into his own saddle, his cow pony swaying precariously beneath him, and scanned the surrounding countryside in a quick search for the who fired the shot. What he saw directly to the northeast, the direction they had come from, was a band of men on horseback, all armed, making. They had drawn up in a straight line, rifles raised.

Billy shouted directions, and they divided up their forces, slapping the flanks of their mounts, and drawing their own weapons. Chavez split off, tugging on the reins. In a detached part of his mind, he was only peripherally aware when the bit tore in the pony's mouth, he muttered a brief apology in the pony's ear, and gave in to its demand to be given its head. The pony and ran full tilt for the spot Chavez had chosen to make his stand. The loose soil gave way beneath, sending rock and debris skittering down the ravine wall. He could hear the curses and shouts of the sheriff's posse below. And it occurred to him, when the man who led the group removed his cap, that he knew the man. It was their old friend, Pat Garrett. He exchanged a knowing glance with Doc. Billy would be incensed, but that was neither here nor there. They were too busy trying to stay alive.

He reached his position, checked the ammunition in his rifle and began returning fire, with far more accuracy than the posse conscripts. He shouted a war cry and gave his attention over to the task at hand.

Doc's eyes narrowed to a deeper icy blue, in the clear light, one that matched the sharpness of his mind, one removed for the classroom. Chavez, knew that if he should fail, Doc would be there to help him out trouble. In the back of his mind, he recalled an old saying that he had learned from his mother's people: "'When troubles come, they come not as single spies, but in battalions.'" "Look out!" Doc yelled to Billy, who jogged his horse down the ravine steep slope and was engaged in dealing blows with one of the mounted pursuers in a hand to hand to fight. "Disengage!" Doc yelled. Dave plunged his horse into the melee and immediately disappeared in the cloud of rising dust.

In the confusion of the fight, no one took notice of a small, small-boned, wearing glasses that in a panic, grabbed the reins, and made a bolt for somewhere were the rules made sense.

Finally, it was over, and they regrouped and headed out.

Afterwards

"I think we've lost'em!" Billy shouted, laughing like a maniac, and racing ahead of the others, circling around like a timber wolf Chavez had once tracked for days, and cornered at its lair, and brought back home. It had been a cub, but all the same it could be dangerous.

"I cannot believe we just did that!" Dave exclaimed breathlessly. "Man, what a rush!"

"Only you would get off on near death experiences, Dave," Doc rattled on him. If he could make jokes after everything they had just been through, then he would be all right.

"What now, Billy?"

"We must finish the game, Doc. I will finish the game."


	2. Blood Money

Blood Money (Young Guns II) sequel to "Brothers in Arms" shortly after the events that took place in the movie, from Garrett's POV.  
Pat Garrett hates the gritty unpleasant taste of dust coating the roof of his mouth. It's an inevitable part of his job as the territory law enforcer.  
He had to give his present quarry due credit.

Led by his former partner and best friend, Billy the Kid, and fellow outlaws, he has been led hither and yon back and forth across the desert landscape of the New Mexico territory. Either the Kid has the eqivalent talent for getting lost with the intention of never being found of a timber coyote. Or he can go with the theory that he really was lost when he and his friends, Doc Scurlock, Chavez, Arknasas Dave, and the kid, Tommy, rode down the edge of that ravine and went plummeting, horses, gear, men and all and then disappeared.

The only tactical error Billy made was when he thought himself safe and headed back for the comforts of civilization, when they were trapped by Garrett and his posse at the home of Jane Greathouse.

Garrett knows the way the kid thinks, that was one the selling points the movers and shakers in the men that controlled the purse strings and the laws that governed the towns, were sold on him. "t;s money, but it's blood money," Garrett mutters to himself, sitting at the far back corner of the catina where he'd finally caught up with his quarry and shot Billy the Kid in the back of the head.

From the very first moment when it sunk in that he'd been paid by men with a lot of real power in the civilized world that they knew and played like a man playing concerto piano. They were afraid of the Kid, and to be honest afraid of him, for his past with the gang; but they needed him and they were willing to pay any sum of money that he could name. He supposed that at the end of the day he can proud of the fact that he accepted a price that was neither too high or too low; all the same it is still blood money.

It aint the honorable way to die, and I ain't proud of it. Strange, if it weren't for all those times we spent dicing, drinking, wrangling with Billy and the old gang, and this is never how I imagined I'd wind up."

"Can I get you another drink, sir?" the girl asked coming up to his table carrying a tray filled with empty ceramic mugs and Garrett admires the way her brightly orange, red, and brown stripped skirt rustles in a hot evening wind. He is just too darn exhausted to properly appreciate it.  
Garrett glanced up from his moody and meandering thoughts and caught her eye," No, nothing more for me, thank you."

She nodded and left him to return to where the bartender stood behind the counter. Garrett set down his mug and turned over his hands with the palms up. "I can't see it, but I can smell it. I won, wonder why it sure as hell does not feel that way. You're going come back to haunt me, Billy, so it's a crap shot in terms of who will be the ultimate winner in our little game of one-man-up." 


	3. The Last Hurrah

The Last Hurrah Fandom: Young Guns II (movie) Characters: Josiah "Doc" Scurlock, cameo: Pat "Patsy" Garrett belong to the producers and directors of the movie.

"The Last Hurrah" by Karen

His number could have come up at any time, and somehow by either dumb luck or skill , or even given the law of averages. 

Yet, some how, every time it appeared as if any and all members of the Billy the Kid's gang would punch out they had managed to evade imminent death by a very narrow margin.

Doc had seen Tom go down several miles to the north of his present position, and Arkansas Dave had been separated from him at the last half-mile; and now he was alone.

The fact that it was their old friend, Pat Garrett, that led the pursuit did not stick in his craw as much as he had thought it would.

'Although,' he thought. 'Billy might have an entirely different opinion on the matter. He just did everything on a intense, higher edge than the rest of us, it was like a windstorm, one could not help but get caught up in energy.'

'A very narrow margin, indeed," Josiah "Doc" Scurlock thought as he pulled back the catch on his long, narrow rifle and peered out through the crumbling and dilapidated slats in the abandoned charcoal cutter's house.

The report of a rifle being fired echoed in the still morning air and cracked the silence.

Scurlock jerked his head away from the eye slit, narrowly avoiding the bullet that grazed his skull and whirred through the space where his head had been only moments before. "Damn it!" he griped.

The near miss was only a ranging shot, and Doc took a deep breath, finished reloading his rifle from his own dwindling supply of ammunition before he took up another position where he could get could range and began returning fire when a line of mounted men came into view

"It didn't have to end like this, Doc," Pat Garrett yelled out to him from his where he had ordered hid men to draw up in formation.

Doc's ears still rang from the discharge of the bullets that had rattled both him and his shelter only seconds earlier, but either by a trick of the light or the wind soughing across the flats, Garrett's words were carried loud and clear to where he crouched in the hut.

Shouting to be heard over the loud whanging and whirring of gunshots Doc yelled.

"That was the first intelligent thing that you've said for several days, old friend!"

"Give it up, Doc," Garrett shouted back. "You can't win. Turn yourself, and I have it on good authority, that the Governor has promised to be merciful.

"I will finish the game," Doc shouted. In the back of his mind, he wondered why he was holding out so long, after all he had a wife and a kid waiting for him, and Billy surely could not expect him to give up on them, but then he thought, Garrett had already betrayed them all; all of his former friends. This promise of mercy if he gave up, rang hollow.

"I have one thing to say," Doc replied, calmly getting to his feet and approaching the entrance to the hut. I believe the English poet Thomas Dylan said it best. "" Do not go gentle into that good night/ Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.

"You always were the sentimental type, Doc," Garrett yelled and then with his mount shifting restlessly underneath him, "I'll take that as a no, then?"

"In a word, yeah," Doc replied.

"You do realize that by doing this, you've pretty much signed your own death warrant?" Garrett asked.

"I knew the risks going into this, and I found them acceptable. Get it over with," Doc replied.

"Have it your way," Garrett sighed, raising his arm and signaling his men to open fire.

On the open flats there was not many choices in which to hide, except for a few outcroppings and some scraggly-looking scrub brushed and trees. "Come on," he muttered aloud to his pursuers. "I know you're out there. I you want me, then get it over with already. Come and get me."

The bullets sped across the open space from where they his would-be executioners were mounted, and where Doc stood in the doorway of the hut, and his last thought before death took him was: "I was not afraid." 


	4. A Legend in His Own Mind

Disclaimer: Young Guns I, II, the characters of the gang, are the creation of the producers and directors of the movies; they are not mine.

"A Legend in His Own Mind" by Karen

Up until that brief visit to the Apache burial site, Arkansas Dave Rudabaugh had never given much thought to the afterlife.

He remembered something that his old buddy back in Silver Springs, Nevada had once told him, granted it was only after the had managed to pull off a dangerous, foolhardy and extremely glorious stunt.

"If you think you're going to live forever, you must be out of your damn mind."

"I do have my moments." Dave distinctly recalled answering his friend's, well-intentioned if exasperated outburst.

"Hell, Roger," Dave had gone on.

"I've heard tell, that one can't outrun Death." he laughed "But you can make the bastard work for it."

"Sometimes, Dave," Roger had replied shaking his head: "I think you're in a world that the rest of us just can't see. And I wish you happiness for it, but I think it's going to catch up with you one of these days."

Dave certainly had not been insane then, and he certainly did not feel like he was about to lose his marbles and go out running into the desert to howl out at the moon. All the same, he did seem to have a knack for getting into trouble, and proceeding to run head long to meet it, and still come out smelling like roses, in spite of everything.

Sure, maybe it had never been of the same caliber as the Billy the Kid; but he did try.

These days, when outlaws seemed to be a dime a dozen, and equally in demand for the powers that be to snatch them and hang them, or relieve them of their heads, it was important to stay one step or a dozen, ahead of the game.

Dave shook himself out his reverie and focused his attention back on keeping his seat in the saddle. His horse needed no encouragement, after all it was rough terrain. Chavez refused to meet his gaze, and he recalled the look on the other's face, stricken and somber at the same time.

"It was just a bunch of stupid old bones," Dave muttered under his breath. "I guess, to Chavez, it's more than that, and I guess I don't blame for reacting the way he did."

In the background he could hear the soughing of the wind across the broken flats and the few sparse trees that dotted the terrain here and there. Underneath him, Dave felt his horse pull at the reins and whinny.

Dave figured it was best to stop wool-gathering and catch up with the other gang members.

The detour to the burial ground certainly would not have thrown off their pursuers, no matter what Billy and Doc Scurlock might think. He kicked his booted feet into the horse's flanks and gave the animal it's head, letting up on the reins as he did so.

Doc glanced sideways at him, but Dave refused to be baited or respond to the questioning look in the older man's blue eyes. "Where to next?" he asked instead.

"North, we'll double back on our trail and lose them in the hills," Billy said.

The others nodded and finished redistributing the remaining baggage on their mounts, before they dropped into a single file and rode off in the direction that Billy had indicated.

In the back of his mind, Dave, decided: 'Some stars are brighter and hotter, even if they burn out fast, and I will be one of those stars, no matter how long and loudly the names of Billy the Kid and other famous outlaws are remembered by generations to come.' Dave smiled at both the image and thought, and kept his place in the line.

Night had come down in full and the bright pinpricks of stars dotted the inky blackness overhead. 


End file.
